Ursynalia Goes With Local Talent

The festival, which is run by local students and an organization called Fundacja Bonum at the grounds of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, reportedly still owes money to many local suppliers who worked on last year’s event.

Ursynalia 2013 became a disaster when acts including ZZ Top, Bad Religion, Steve Aoki, Five Finger Death Punch and Polish rockers Anti-Tank Nun pulled out, all claiming they were advertised before contracts were signed or that their deposits didn’t arrive.

Stories from Warsaw suggested Arek Michalski of Arena Live Production, which was responsible for booking the acts and organizing production, had announced unconfirmed acts to stimulate slow ticket sales.

The next problem was fans complaining that they couldn’t get refunds, even though the major acts they’d paid to see had pulled.

Polish news site Gazeta.pl reports that this year’s Ursynalia is May 31 to June 2, although it won’t be as “raging” as in previous years.

The 31st Ursynalia, which was called Warsaw Student Festival until 2009, won’t have any international acts. In 2012 the festival made international headlines when Limp Bizkit claimed the lack of barriers in front of the stage was the reason for crowd safety problems.

On three occasions vocalist Fred Durst interrupted the band’s set to draw attention to the plight of fans being crushed at the front of the 30,000 crowd and spoke of the lack of barriers.